Clinton pillories Trump’s foreign policy, but history says her experience won’t help

“Imagine him deciding whether to send your spouses or children into battle,” she said. “Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal.”

But consider history: Gerald Ford had served more than two decades in the House of Representatives, had been vice president and then president — all giving him considerable experience in foreign policy and national security.

“Foreign policy and defense policy are difficult and complex issues,” Ford said at one debate. “We can debate methods; we can debate one decision or another. But there are two things which cannot be debated — experience and results.”

Yet he was defeated in 1976 by Jimmy Carter, a relatively unknown former one-term governor of Georgia with no international experience.

Or Carter himself, who ran for re-election four years later with plenty of foreign policy experience.

“I’m a much wiser and more experienced man than I was when I debated four years ago,” he said when he faced Ronald Reagan, a former governor of California.